of her quivering mouth, and she saw his eyes briefly darken. ‘Why, you, of course, Scarlett. Didn’t you realise? I’ve come for you.’
‘Are you mad?’ she whispered.
His mouth was a hard, unremitting slash in the moonlight. ‘Are you going to come with me quietly?’
‘I’m not coming anywhere with you!’
He gave her a look of quietly controlled rage. ‘Oh, I think so, Scarlett. A word with my wife. In private.’
‘You are mad!’ she responded in disbelief. ‘I’m getting married to someone else! The divorce papers are through!’
He shook his head. ‘On the contrary. You’ve jumped the gun a little, my dear. The divorce papers are not complete. Admittedly, the decree nisi is through—but the absolute isn’t due for another five weeks.’ He gave a cold and cynical smile. ‘So legally, at least, you are still my wife, and I have a proposition to put to you. Now, are you coming quietly or not?’ he repeated.
The craziness of the last few minutes crystallised into one incredible and jarring fact.
Liam was back!
She found her voice again. ‘Coming? With you? You must be kidding! The last person on earth I’d ever go with is you—you no-good, low-down, rotten—!’
Again, he gave that cool, faintly cynical smile.
‘Oh, Scarlett,’ he said, shaking his head at her as he caught her wrist in a vice-like grip. ‘I should have known that you’d be awkward.’
‘Let go of me!’ she ordered. ‘Or I’ll scream the place down.’
‘Oh, dear,’ he murmured, almost conversationally. ‘I was hoping that we might be able to do this in a civilised manner. But then, I’d forgotten that legendary temper of yours.’
She tried to struggle, but it was no good. Even using her one free hand to flail at that impossibly hard chest was useless, and he bent down to scoop her underneath her knees and toss her over his shoulder, her head dangling down his back and his hand clasped possessively over the bare flesh of the backs of her thighs which lay above the line of her stocking-tops. He stroked one thigh with a long, lazy finger.
‘Mmm!’ he murmured, in a voice soft with sexual promise. ‘Nice!’
And then something unbelievable happened.
For one fleeting and betraying moment a spark of dormant humour bubbled up from deep within her, and somehow that ability of his to make her smile was in its own way far more damaging than his ability to wring a physical response from her. He was certainly the most unconventional man she’d ever met in her life! And she was back in his arms! But she quelled the betraying spark immediately as she remembered just what he’d done.
Liam had left her at the lowest point in her life, and for that she would never forgive him. ‘I hate you,’ she muttered into his back as he walked towards the drive.
‘And the feeling,’ he said, in a strangely bitter voice, ‘is entirely mutual.’
‘PUT me down!’ Scarlett shrieked into the cold white night, but Liam completely ignored her and carried on calmly walking through the snow towards a low black car which was parked at the end of the driveway.
Surely someone would see them go? And think it odd that this towering dark man was carrying the hostess over his shoulder through the snow. Where the hell was Henry, or her stepfather? ‘Put me down, or I’ll scream!’
‘Scream and I’ll have to kiss you quiet!’ he threatened savagely.
And, because she didn’t trust herself to risk that, Scarlett hastily closed the mouth which she had opened to give him the full benefit of her loudest, most ear-piercing shriek, right next to his ear.
He reached the car and pulled open the driver’s door, only to lift her over onto the passenger seat and snap her seatbelt shut. Then, with an agility remarkable for such a tall man, he slid his long legs into the seat next to her, belted himself in and started up the powerful engine, which gave a low, throaty roar as the car shot off.
She pulled at the lock, but it wouldn’t budge.
‘We’re doing fifty, and that door is safety-primed not to open while the car is in motion, so you might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.’
This could not be happening to her. In a minute she would be back at the party, in Henry’s safe and undemanding arms.
‘Stop this car at once!’
‘No.’
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘You’ll see,’ came the implacable reply.
She knew that determined set of his mouth from old—knew that it signalled the inexorable side of his nature. And she sat back in a daze against the soft leather of the seat before her senses began to return, and with them her temper.
‘This is kidnap, you do realise that?’
‘Is it? A court might see it differently—a husband making a last-minute stab at reconciliation...’
Quite without warning her heart gave a sudden lurch as she remembered the nights she’d spent sobbing into her pillow, not really believing that he had walked out on her for good. Oh, the black, heartless devil! ‘But Liam,’ she said coldly, ‘you seem to have missed the whole point of the party which you gatecrashed. I’m going to be married in five weeks’ time. To Henry.’
‘Are you?’ he queried silkily.
‘Yes, I am!’ But Scarlett found herself shivering at his deep, dark voice—hating herself for the little frisson of awareness which traced sensuous fingers up the entire length of her spine. Just what was it about this particular man which sent her senses into overdrive? ‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded again, hearing her own tame question with appalled disbelief. Why wasn’t she screaming the place down?
Because it wouldn’t do her any good; she knew that. He was too strong to resist. And not just physically either.
He didn’t answer, just gave her a brief sideways glance—in time to see the tremble that convulsed her upper body. ‘You’re cold,’ he remarked, and put out a strong brown hand to turn the heating up.
‘Of course I’m cold!’ she returned. ‘It’s the middle of winter, it’s snowing, and I’m wearing very thin clothes.’
‘And very little underwear, from what I saw,’ he grated. ‘You never used to wear such sexy little bits of nonsense when you were married to me! But then I don’t really remember you wearing much underwear at all. The problem we had, as I recall, was keeping it on.’
Scarlett’s mouth fell wide open as she turned to look at him in disbelieving shock. ‘What was that you said?’
‘You heard.’
